Addendum to my unqualified praise for "Don't Look Up."

[sabotabby]

 After a round of internet arguments (not on DW, elsewhere) I am left to conclude that the two major problems of pop cultural criticism are 1) A Modest Proposal is no longer taught in schools*, and 2) no one on the online left has actually read as much Bertolt Brecht as they claim to, if any at all.

I am happy to elaborate in comments.

* I am generally in favour of replacing Dead White Guy Literature in the compulsory high school canon but A Modest Proposal is my one exception. I am open to replacements and expansions for it, particularly by First Nations, Métis, or Inuit authors. Walking Eagle News is great and I absolutely plan to use it.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

The more I think about it the more I agree with you.

[sabotabby]

I always assume a certain amount of film literacy and I'm often surprised when I encounter its absence.

[altamira16]

There is a lot of leftism without any historical context, and it is weird.

[sabotabby]

It's always been a problem, and I remember movement elders complaining about it when I was a baby anarkid. But I think the difference for me is that I spent a lot of time in groups that weren't just other 20-somethings (largely because I got purged from those) and it meant that I ended up talking to older generations and reading theory and such. I think the kids these days are getting a fair bit of the latter but not necessarily the former.

[numb3r_5ev3n]

I've heard a lot of good things about this movie from people I trust, and I plan on seeing this soon.

[sabotabby]

It is causing much debate on my FB.

[kore]

Boy, the few super lefties I follow on Twitter for reasons mostly unrelated to politics (i.e. they weren't mean about the Matrix) HATE it. Hunh.

[kore]

We saw it! It was great. Unfortunately then it was even more difficult to understand why so many lefties and film critics HATED it ("it makes no difference how many people watch it! Deep Impact for nerds! Masturbatory virtue signalling! Not funny! The wigs are bad!"). Some buttons are getting pushed and pushed hard I guess, but do I have to read about it online as a weak attempt at criticism of a film?

[sabotabby]

I got into it with some lefties whose main critiques appear to boil down to:

No depiction of working class solidarity

My rebuttal: This is by design. It doesn't work if you have that as a plot point. Either it's successful and the movie is no longer a satire, or it's unsuccessful and you have nihilism.

Working class portrayed negativity

My rebuttal: This reflects an outdated and vulgar Marxist notion of class—did people not notice the PhD character working in a store, or the skateboarder character? It wasn't just the MAGAs at the rally.

It's liberal/it's the liberal intelligentsia poking fun at themselves

My rebuttal: It's not liberal as it directly engages liberal solutions and finds them lacking. Also, if you pay attention to the visuals, which no one seems to anymore, the styling of the president character is intentionally showing that Republicans and Democrats are interchangeable.

Unfunny/too long/badly edited

My rebuttal: That's subjective.

Except if you read Brecht's writing on theatre, you will notice that a lot of the things that people are bouncing off are by design. Even the fourth-wall breaking at the beginning is a nod to that. It is explicitly telling you what it's doing.

Anyway the whole point is to provoke a conversation and the conversation is about the solutions that were not depicted in the film.

In fairness I think media literacy has declined in the population overall. With the left there's always been a high percentage of the Frankfurt School descendants who are mistrustful of the whole medium and only watch highbrow art films and the Representation People who who are quite literal about messaging in film. The former have high visual literacy but aren't very good at applying those ideas to mainstream film, and the latter tend to have less formal knowledge of filmmaking. And then there's the leftist need for every left-leaning film to be perfect, which obviously this isn't.

[kore]

No depiction of working class solidarity

....whut. For one thing, this movie is about the people making the policy! Working class ppl generally DON'T GET TO DO THAT. And yeah, you're right, it doesn't fit in a satire anyway. (You're also right that apparently people don't know any more what "satire" means.)

Working class portrayed negativity

But but the whole Cate Blanchette character? She was a total elite! Not!Elon Musk is in it! There are also some more regular workers, like the reporters they talk to or the people who beg Kate to tell them what is actually happening (which was really surprisingly moving) or the people at the launch at the end who are like "Fuck this, I'm going to my family" or the skater rats or....

Also, if you pay attention to the visuals, which no one seems to anymore, the styling of the president character is intentionally showing that Republicans and Democrats are interchangeable

I had to admit, I took total joy in Meryl Streep cackling away playing Donald Trump. That was an inspired casting choice and helped make the movie for me. I would not have enjoyed it half as much if it had just been a typical older white guy, lol. I heard some people saying what she did was OTT, but hey, I REMEMBER when everyone thought Trump was fucking DEAD IN THE WATER after "grab 'em by the pussy." I WAS THERE.

Except if you read Brecht's writing on theatre, you will notice that a lot of the things that people are bouncing off are by design. Even the fourth-wall breaking at the beginning is a nod to that. It is explicitly telling you what it's doing.

LOLsob if I ever read Brecht, it was probably twenty....thirty years ago? -- Like Matrix resurrections (which critic also hated, lol) it was EXTREMELY meta and "you are watching a story and we know you know you're watching a story and this is what it's really about" (Resurrections turns out to be more about....Trinity!) and so on. I actually liked it a lot better and thought it was less condescending than The Big Short, the one all the critics drooled over. I think what made a lot of critics mad was they were expecting these movies to mock themselves for some reason, and they really didn't. The heart of Resurrections is the Neo/Trinity love story, and the heart of this movie was that scene at the end where they all come together and celebrate their connection even tho it's about to end (a la On the Beach).

Anyway the whole point is to provoke a conversation and the conversation is about the solutions that were not depicted in the film.

I think it goes a bit further than that -- like, surprise, the film is applicable to covid! To climate change! To this or that! But like you said, it's really about our response to disaster, and our ability to blind ourselves and pretend that what's going on is normal, and not only normal, but unquestionable. Just how things are. (Kind of like how mid-life crisis hits some people with the realization they're going to die, but then they buy a sports car, lol.) Change, actual real change, is really hard and takes a lot of time and effort and is not immediately rewarding. -- And the other BIG POINT is, since the Industrial Revolution happened, the control of industry has not been in the hands of the workers or governments. (Yeah, we have the FDA and other regulatory agencies, but they're recent, and hobbled.) Trump ACTUALLY SAID that covid would wash away, that it would all be over, that it would be gone, that all we had to do was wait. Unlike what a lot of liberals think, that kind of response is not concretely limited to covid or Trump (otherwise Trump would never have appealed to anyone). It's about denial/denialism. Which is a human thing, not just a liberal/conservative or Trump thing. They called the movie DON'T look up.

....re your last para I am sadly ignorant of a lot of those schools of thought, but it's A SATIRE! A SATIRE. Those typically do not produce SOLUTIONS. I think people got used to thinking of John Stewart as satire or something (Stephen Colbert was the satire, but then even that got softer). Satire is not "talking about real life issues, but in a funny way." Alternately, everyone's brain got fried by four fucking years of Trumpty going, "It was a joke! I didn't mean it. But I did mean it. I don't joke. But I do joke! But I don't mean it. But I mean it."

[sabotabby]

There are also some more regular workers, like the reporters they talk to or the people who beg Kate to tell them what is actually happening (which was really surprisingly moving) or the people at the launch at the end who are like "Fuck this, I'm going to my family" or the skater rats or...

Yep it is pretty clear on "workers do the best they can when they actually have clear information" thing.

What they mean is white male workers in blue collar industries, though.

I do need to see Resurrections. I can't let my hatred for 2 and 3 colour this. I did like the Big Short, but controversially, I thought the book was a lot better.

Alternately, everyone's brain got fried by four fucking years of Trumpty going, "It was a joke! I didn't mean it. But I did mean it. I don't joke. But I do joke! But I don't mean it. But I mean it."

This is actually a bigger problem (I am only slightly kidding about "A Modest Proposal" but no I'm not kidding). We have allowed satire to be used interchangeably with the punching down, Schroedinger's Joke type of political speech, and it is specifically not that.

I'm sure there is satire that deals in constructive solutions but not really the great works. Threepenny Opera doesn't have a single sympathetic character. Dr. Strangelove doesn't have a bunch of really effective anti-war activists burst into the War Room and stop the detonation. The whole point of devastating critique is to fucking devastate.

[kore]

Resurrections was fucking awesome! I LOATHED 2 and 3 and rewatched them before 4 (MISTAKE) and it's nothing like them, really. It feels really informed by Sense8, which I also loved.

Yeah, satire is like Juvenal and Swift and so on. Is it constructive social criticism? Fuck no. And, yeah, it doesn't mean "just being a dick to people especially PoC and women," either. It's like how being funny got mixed up with being mean, so if you're mean, you can say "It was just a joke" and get off, even though it clearly wasn't any kind of joke.

I am baffled by all the film critics saying this film isn't like Dr Strangelove, "but that's unfair since it's a classic! But still, it's not Dr Strangelove!" The focus in Dr Strangelove is on the inffectual politicans and rabid generals and the actual NAZI titular character and the ending of the film strongly suggests he's going to head a post-apocalyptic eugenics breeding program?! Not on "solutions" or "the global community coming together" or whatever the fuck that NPR circle table wanted out of DLU. -- Strangelove is also part of a tradition that's been around since at least Lysistrata, the specific anti-war satire. It's not there to Inspire People To Stop War. Even the centrist liberal NPR types seem to have this weird misunderstanding of politically inspired art right now, like it should list action points at the end and if people don't want to go out and do them, the film is a failure. What about art as inspiration, motivation?


tl;dr I think a lot of critics are pissed it wasn't The Big Short for some reason (I'm sure that has nothing to do with that movie starring mostly white male actors as Wolves You Love To Hate types)

[sabotabby]

What I don't get is that this film is structurally Dr. Strangelove. If anything, it's kinder to its characters, as at least some of them make an attempt and are sympathetic. But in terms of "there is a system that fails because there are obvious loopholes that will result in apocalypse if it's just allowed to roll on, and anyone with the power to close said loopholes is stupid, evil, or both, so the apocalypse happens, but hey, the most villainous character has a backup plan to ensure a small group of elite survivors make it," there is a satirical template and it follows it.

tl;dr I think a lot of critics are pissed it wasn't The Big Short for some reason (I'm sure that has nothing to do with that movie starring mostly white male actors as Wolves You Love To Hate types)

Imagine that! A filmmaker with range.

[kore]

Imagine that! A filmmaker with range.

A lot of the critics who hated this film also hated Vice, which I hadn't heard of and am now at least curious about.

[sabotabby]

I was vaguely aware when it came out but I thought it was a biopic so I avoided it.

[kore]

I just could not watch anything about W or that whole gang for years and years. I would feel so angry it was like I was having an out-of-body experience. The country was already in a bad way (post-Reagan, "centrist Democrats") but W was like the epic landslide into shitsville.

[sabotabby]

So valid.